Japan’s football chief has raised the decibel level against vuvuzelas — long, plastic trumpets used by South African supporters — at next year’s World Cup.
The Blue Samurai were exposed to the ubiquitous horns when they battled to a 0-0 friendly draw against next year’s World Cup hosts in their first senior-level encounter, in Port Elizabeth on Saturday.
”I’ve asked the South African Football Association to ban the noise,” Japan Football Association president Motoaki Inukai told Japanese media before leaving Johannesburg on Monday.
”We can’t even hear sounds from 5m away.”
Inukai also said he would raise the problem when world football governing body Fifa convenes for the World Cup draw in Cape Town on December 4.
He wants to see the trumpets banned at games not involving hosts South Africa, Japanese media reported.
”I will bring it up,” he said, adding: ”I know there is a difficult aspect to it because of differences in the culture of football as a source of entertainment.”
Inukai said he was told by his South African counterpart, Kirsten Nematandani, that local supporters had been asked to be restrained in their use of vuvuzelas, but that ”when someone blows it everybody starts to blow it.”
The trumpets baffled some foreign teams and broadcasters in South Africa during the Confederations Cup in June, with several non-African players and coaches calling for a ban.
Fifa president Sepp Blatter, however, has given the vuvuzela his blessing, telling detractors that dance and music is important in Africa and that moaning about the instrument bordered on discrimination.
Japanese players had mixed views.
”We couldn’t hear each other when we were 2m away,” Japan and Urawa Reds centre-back Marcus Tulio Tanaka complained after the match.
But Espanyol midfielder Shunsuke Nakamura said: ”It was good for us to feel the atmosphere as a whole.” — Sapa-AFP